A deeply divided House approved its latest version of terrorist surveillance legislation today,
rebuffing President Bush's demand for a bill that would grant telecommunications firms retroactive immunity for cooperation in past warrantless wiretapping and deepening the impasse on a fundamental national security issue.
Congress then defiantly left Washington for a two-week spring break.
The legislation, approved 213-197, would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and keep pace with ever-changing communications technologies.
But it challenges the Bush administration on a number of fronts, by restoring the power of the federal courts to approve wiretapping warrants, authorizing federal inspectors general to investigate the administration's warrantless surveillance efforts, and establishing a bipartisan commission to examine the activities of intelligence agencies in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031400803_pf.html